color from ashes
by mktoddsparky
Summary: /Meticulously, carefully, quietly, she cut out his name every time it appeared in the newspaper and glued his name all over her white ceiling until she couldn't even see the ceiling anymore, only his name haunting her very soul./ The scars you never see.


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**.:o color from ashes o:.**

Yes, I know, two stories in one day, but I got to thinking again - and we all know what catastrophic events come from that. JK gives us hints of a deep relationship between Tonks and Sirius and I wanted to expand it a bit, as well as toss in Remus and Harry and her parents to show you a picture of the Tonks we don't often see. This contains dark themes, just letting you know.

* * *

Her parents named her Nymphadora, the worst concievable thing to call a child, by her reckoning. It reminded her of tea parties and picture perfect ladies dressed in the latest fashions and being trapped.

She didn't want to be trapped - she wanted to be free to be her, not a clever mask that completely covered who she truly was inside.

* * *

She told her mother and father that she wanted to be called Tonks - after all, being known by your last name was better than being known as Nymphadora.

Her mother fainted, covering her mouth just like the feminine model she was as she keeled over onto the plush carpet.

"Why do you want to be called something different than your birth name?" Her father asked, fixing her with a stare that she couldn't seem to look away from. Ted had a way about him that made her instantly regret her actions; she wanted to please him with all her heart.

"I want to be me," she answered simply, changing her hair color to an electric yellow to prove her point.

"A name does not determine who you are," her father reckoned wisely, planting a gentle kiss on her forehead. "Stop trying to grow up so fast, honey." She heard the tears trembling in his tone.

She couldn't manage to say a word. What could she say that wouldn't offend him?

* * *

She grew up the Black family line, a clear disgrace from the start.

When her mother, Andromeda Tonks, attempted to put bows in her hair she simply changed the color of her hair to horribly clash the ribbons - several favorable colors extended from neon green to oozing orange - or tugged the ornaments out when her mother wasn't looking.

When Andromeda recounted her frivolous romance with Ted - because at the time it was apparently classy to elope with a weedy-looking muggle - she, playing the perfect role of an abominable daughter, yawned in boredom.

When Andromeda linked arms with her daughter and led her outside to work on walking etiquette the latter broke away and, grabbing her broom from its haphazard position on the shed floor, shot into the sunny skies, whooping in delight.

The acts weren't done out of belligerence; rather, she simply felt curious about breaking the rules and the typical adrenaline rush that followed and so decided to test the waters.

* * *

They said she was a hopeless cause. They said they could never hope to change someone like her.

Kneeling on the stairs next to the parlor, she heard every word that transpired between her parents, tears of disbelief cluttering in her eyes. Her irises bled into an incandescent ocean and without a word she drew her cloak tighter about her petite form and stumbled outside.

* * *

She loved riding her broom; it was as simple a sentiment she could make to describe an aspect of her life she believed she couldn't live without.

Swishing through the air and perfecting a loop, Tonks allowed her golden hair to flow behind her, pretending that she was a fair maiden just waiting to be rescued. But then again she never had been much of a princess, especially by her mother's standards.

Now she was using her flying to let out some of the hopeless, steaming emotions that had been steadily building up in her heart the past number of weeks. The wind shrieked around her as she flew higher and higher still, defying gravity and proving that she could best even an inanimate something.

She was not hopeless - hopeless to her parents and society, perhaps, but not hopeless.

Is this what being free felt like, or was she just trapped? She could no longer tell.

* * *

"I'm going to become an Auror," she told her parents without a smidge of emotion in her tone after getting back her near perfect grade report from her NEWTs.

"Are you really that willing to throw away your future?" Her mother asked icily but there was a fearful warmth in the older woman's eyes - she did care about her daughter's happiness but her mantra of life refuted that warmth at times.

"This is my future." It was true enough, although Tonks viewed it as more of a rebellion. This house, her mother, her life trapped her in its smothering grasp and she just needed to _be_.

She just needed to be her for once, whether any of them would accept her or not.

* * *

She fought and cut and stabbed and killed those who dared disrupt the Order she had come to serve and with each kill her spirit ebbed away to a frail remembrance.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd actually been happy. Now death trapped her in its icy grip and shook her to oblivion no matter how much she struggled.

"Smile, Dora," Sirius reminded her with a cheeky grin whenever he happened to pass her.

She felt her hair lighten and her lungs cease their gasping, "Wonker, Sirius." She managed a smile - even though it should have been impossible for her to smile after so much desecration.

* * *

They were walking back towards her home one evening, his arm tucked under her own, when suddenly their fingertips brushed and something beautiful blossomed across her face.

"I can't be the man you choose," Sirius whispered as they fell onto the freshly cut lawn beside her home, ripping their clothes off at a dizzying speed.

"I know," Tonks answered simply, capturing his surprisingly tender lips with her own. She didn't know how he made her so happy; he just did, and she wouldn't change that for the world.

"This doesn't mean anything," he muttered, nipping at her ear.

Something died in her eyes at that sentiment but all she did was smile in a flat sort of way and kiss him again until she couldn't breathe.

_It means everything._

* * *

She stood there and watched Harry scream in disbelief and heard Bellatrix cackle victoriously and felt her heart wrench as Sirius - her beautiful, undefiled, Sirius - fell through a veil and disappeared forever.

She wanted to wail and beat her chest and fall apart but that just wasn't her - or was it? She couldn't really tell anymore - so she simply stood there and bowed her head in respectful sorrow.

Nobody would ever know how she was crumbling to pieces that somber evening.

_It means everything. _She never thought or said those words ever again.

* * *

"How do you do it?" She asked her friend Remus one afternoon when the wars were waging fiercely. "How do you keep the screams and the cries and life from making you go insane?"

Grabbing her legs she hugged herself together, figuring that at least she could try and remain in one piece.

"Sometimes you don't," Remus answered truthfully, throwing a sympathetic glance in her direction. "Sometimes you fall apart and wish yourself dead."

She found his perspective refreshing - he didn't seem trapped by that sunshine reality...no, he strove for quite the opposite.

* * *

She read the paper, his name popping up every sentence until she felt like she was being punctured all over: Sirius...Sirius...Sirius...Sirius.

Meticulously, carefully, quietly, she cut out his name every time it appeared in the newspaper and glued his name all over her white ceiling until she couldn't even see the ceiling anymore, only his name haunting her very soul.

* * *

She found Harry splayed out on the floor of the train, blood spattered across his skin and a dead expression in his eyes.

There was no need to ask what made him so quiet - underneath it all they were mourning for the loss of a dear friend - but she did wonder, "Who did this to you?"

"Malfoy," Harry spat, rubbing his scar absentmindedly.

She cursed the name of Malfoy in her mind, wishing she could ask Harry how much he missed Sirius, because sometimes she felt like exploding.

He turned his face in her direction, his jade eyes seeking her musing expression in a silent question and she knew that he knew what she was thinking about. It was all they thought about now.

She found a companion in Harry - perhaps because they were both trapped in their own indescribable ways, both leading them towards a path of imminent darkness.

* * *

She ate & ate & ate & ate until her stomach hurt and her head hurt and she felt as if she might explode. And then, only then, did she cease her ravenous passion and sit by the fire and dream of better days.

The food didn't fill her up at all, like she hoped it would - rather, it made her feel ashamed of who she had become.

"I need you, Remus," she croaked into her phone and moments later he apparated to her home.

They embraced, he struggling to propel them to the couch while she trembled from head to foot.

"I can't do this anymore," she confessed. "I have to laugh again. _I can't be trapped_."

So he propped her up, fetched them some brandy, and they toasted to good fortune and happier days and then a host of ridiculous itineraries and drank until they were giggling and choking on their laughter.

She didn't feel happy, exactly. But this was the closest to happiness she had come in a long, long time.

* * *

She heard Sirius one night when she was drifting into blissful unconsciousness and feeling guilt over dreaming of lighter brown hair and a pessimistic attitude that had never belonged to Sirius.

_Move on. _She knew it was him talking.

"I don't want to move on," she whimpered into the blackness of her room, eyeing the way the feeble light threw her furniture in menacing shadows. She was no longer afraid of the night, didn't believe in monsters.

And then he whispered the words that made her freeze. _It meant everything. _

"I know," she answered, her vision blurring with tears. "It will always mean everything." And with that she let him go, letting him fall into the web that trapped and twisted her thoughts beyond sanity.

A smile traced her lips in the darkness.

* * *

"I don't know how you do it, Tonks," Harry mused while the companions lounged in chairs by a window. "I don't know how you remain joyful despite all the gruesome displays around you."

She looked at him, noting the bags under his drooping eyes and the hopelessness echoing in the depths of his pupils. She could simply burst his bubble and tell him that she wasn't happy but that certainly wouldn't help anybody.

"I'm not always happy," she stated quietly, fiddling with her fingers and smiling to herself as she pictured Remus, "but sometimes I am. And those moments are glorious...you just have to be patient and wait for them."

They looked at each other, jaws quivering, and then suddenly they were laughing and Tonks felt more lighthearted then she had in years.

* * *

"I love you," she admitted to Remus one day while they were simply staring at the cloudy skies.

Their eyes connected, her irises melting into pure chocolate pools of hope, and then he walked away.

_We can't do this. _They both had already accepted it, knowing that because he was a full werewolf he could potentially kill her. But then again, she had never been one to listen to rules and so now she was trapped in a web of unrequited love with no hope of escape.

And yet, he was doing the right thing, walking away and leaving her all alone. Her heart just refused to accept it.

* * *

She apparated onto her parent's doorstep, her hand hesitantly raising to rap smartly on the worn wood, "'Ello?"

Her mother peered through the crack in the door, her expression guarded, and said nothing, simply eyeing the wreck of a daughter she had brought into this world so many years before.

"I can't be free from you anymore," Tonks whispered, stumbling into her conceiver's arms without another word and drinking in her mother's familiar scent.

* * *

She married Remus and she kissed him on the alter and felt a rush of something that should have freed her. He represented freedom in her eyes and so by marrying him she expected to recieve his freedom as well.

Only she didn't.

* * *

She heard the feeble cry of a child and her heartbeat thumped in her chest as she eyed the baby she had carried for nine months. He was the perfect mix of her and Remus, everything she had hoped for in the past months of her pregnancy.

"Teddy Remus Lupin," she crooned to the child, offering him up for inspection. Harry Potter's tender gaze slid over her child - and as she looked at the Chosen One she wondered if he was _more trapped than herself_.

"You'll be the godfather?" Tonks asked the dark haired man she had grown up protecting.

Now she could only hope he could protect her son.

* * *

"I asked Harry to be the godfather," she told Remus some time later, the cries of the Death Eaters already creeping across the grounds of Hogwarts.

He nodded before pulling her into a dizzying kiss. The kiss was frightening and desperate and she knew in that moment that they would not escape this night alive. The thought didn't bother her as much as it would have many years ago - somehow in the course of her years she had stopped fighting the thought of being trapped.

It was impossible to escape the cage she had been born into.

Remus seemed to sense this change in his wife as well, for he stroked her cheek and murmured, "When did you grow up, Dora?"

To hear him call her Dora stung beyond belief - for only Sirius had held the right to call her such a feminine name and now he was gone, _dead_ - but she only answered, "This life made me grow up."

* * *

"I love you," she told her mother and father as her head crackled in their fireplace, the flames caressing her dark black hair. Ted and Andromeda knew their daughter well enough to know that she was telling them goodbye in the sweetest way she could.

"I love you too, honey," Ted murmered, smiling despite the fact that his aging heart was breaking.

"Tonks," Andromeda whispered, stepping closer to her daughter's head. "You were never worthless."

She looked at her mother for a long time, memorizing those toughened features that she had grown up with, "It's a little late for that."

And then she was gone, leaving her loved ones to mourn.

* * *

She slumped beside her husband's cold, lifeless form, her eyes gazing at his pale face and sightless gaze as she smiled.

"I can feel you, Sirius," she whispered into the chaos, her own world perfectly silent as she embraced her dark haired lover. "I'm coming soon."

And then she locked gazes with Harry and, allowing the mask she had constructed to hide her vulnerabilities to bleed away, she whispered, "I was never happy."

Suddenly green light flared and she felt the impact of the spell hit her directly in her heart, tearing the web that had trapped her since birth to shreds, and she was gone. She would never hear or see Harry standing over her dead body, weeping as his fingers curled around the mark of the spell that had ended her life.

For the first time she finally felt _free_.

**.:o the end o:.**


End file.
